Bestselling Romance Author

Must Read: Smart Girl Heroines

Many heroines are smart in their own way—street smart, emotionally intelligent, society smart, etc—but some are brainy, book smart heroines. You know, the ones who would get 1600’s on the SAT’s (if those had been invented), the ones who are PhD level smart and diligent in their studies, those who truly find it fun and essential to their happiness to study rocks or comets or whatever.

I am not one of those heroines in real life (my super power is my work ethic), so I love being able to slip inside the mind of one when reading. Here are some of my favorite super smart girl heroines in romance, who have given me a glimpse at what it’s like to be brilliant.

Talk Sweetly To Me by Courtney Milan

Miss Rose Sweetly is a shy, mathematically minded shopkeepers daughter, who against all odds for a woman of color in the 19th century is trying to study comets and ensure her sister is well cared for. And then, of course, a rake moves in next door. What happens next is a truly sweet romance novella in Milan’s excellent Brother’s Sinister series.

Brilliant physicist Jane Darlington is 34, single and in want of a baby (who doesn’t suffer the stigma of being too smart, like her) but not a husband. Because this is Romancelandia, the logical next step (in) is of course to pretend to be a hooker to seduce legendary Chicago Bears quarterback Cal Bonner. She’ll get the baby of average intelligence that she wants, without the interferring husband. But she doesn’t count on him being smarter and more honorable than expected—oh and falling in love.

Is there any better combination in romance than the rake and the bluestocking in a sham engagement plot? Methinks not. Dashing ladies man Lord Payne finds himself escorting brilliant spinster/lady scientist Minerva Highwood from Spindle Cove to Scotland. All that time confined in carriages and pretending to share a bed leads to true passion in one of my all time favorite romances.

Another brilliant Dr. Jane! This heroine is a human surgeon who finds herself tending to—and falling in love with—a vampire. As one does. He falls instantly in love, she finds herself back at his lair and their love is confounded by his destiny to be a Primale, a warrior who must take multiple vampire wives. Note: this is book 5 in a series.

The brawny and popular Lord Fox has wagered that he can turn the brainy lady mathematician Claire Cavendish into a darling of the ton—or else he’ll lose his most precious possession. But neither of them counted on is their explosive passion or falling in love…